Gender and Governance: Perspectives from South Asia by Seema Kazi

Author:Seema Kazi [Kazi, Seema]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Zubaan
Published: 2019-07-22T00:00:00+00:00

According to the same report, women in Swat were barred from voting in 60 per cent of the union councils (39 union councils out of a total of 65) due to agreements between political parties. Although the elections were supposedly held on a non-party basis, political parties were fully involved in them, and those in power used the government’s development funds to attract votes. The PPP and ANP formed alliances with the MMA (mainly the JUI-F and JI respectively) at the local level in Swat and other Khyber Pakhtunkhwa districts. These alliances included a bar on women voting and at times contesting elections. The stated justification by JUI-F and JI was that religion forbade women a role in politics; at the same time, the PPP and ANP used the excuse of local cultural practices as justification for denying women the right to political participation. Thus, even before the Taliban takeover, secular progressive parties such as the ANP and PPP were as complicit as the religious right in denying women the right to political participation at the grassroots level. In effect, all political parties circumscribed women’s role in the political domain, making women politically irrelevant by the time of the rise of the Taliban.

Women’s Journeys in Local Government

Women pointed out that male support from family members was often pivotal. Almost all women said that they would not have been able to contest and meet their responsibilities had the men not supported them and stood by them in the face of opposition. Women councillors received both moral and financial support from their families. Marjan Kaleem explained, ‘Often women who came to attend meetings from the mountains would be accompanied by their husbands. They did this willingly. They would leave their children behind and the women in the extended family would look after them.’37 Although women’s awareness of their right to vote was emphasized, it appeared to be tied not only to the woman’s age (young women were not allowed or encouraged to vote) but also to the level of conservatism in her family. In the latter context, it appeared to be more of an issue of the outlook of male family members rather than of economic class.

In all interviews of women ex-councilors, respondents subscribed to the collaborative model of political engagement vis-à-vis men, and preferred to either go along with their advice or sometimes convince them otherwise, avoiding confrontational situations. Our conversations indicated that political participation and contesting elections were not acts of defiance against family patriarchies, but in fact were made possible through family backing and support. This raises an interesting point, because in the literature on women’s rights in Pakistan, the family structure is understood to collude with wider societal patriarchies to continually reproduce women’s subordination. Yet in the case of allowing women to contest elections, it is evident that families in general and male relatives in particular were willing to risk social opprobrium for anticipated gains, whether the incentives were support, personal benefits or collective returns. This is indicative of porous social spaces.

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